Project: Magpie

Image of surveillance camp at Field Station: MP-03 / Heron (part of Project: Magpie)
by Match Zimmerman

PROJECT: MAGPIE
Recovered Signals and the Formation of a Cognitive Base-Camp

Project: Magpie refers to a growing body of my creative and research-based work centered around the emergence of symbolic artifacts, recursive systems, and post-collapse memory structures. What began as a series of speculative design sketches has formed into a multi-modal field network that reflects an evolving world-logic. Visuals, terms, interfaces, sound fragments, and poetic transmissions all trace back to a singular cognitive operation.

A pattern has begun to emerge—not only across the artifacts created as a result of my continued inquiry and exploration, but within the conceptual logic that serves as a through line, tying together the outputs of my creative system and process.

This pattern is not accidental. It reflects a cognitive structure that I have adopted to form a grounded understanding of the unknown.

I’ve started to think of the artifacts that emerge from my recent research, experimentation, and writing as signals themselves—transmissions that may resonate for those tuned to the same frequency.

These signals manifest as any number of outputs: evolving glossaries of terms related to human–AI interaction, glitched interfaces, residual phrases drawn from memories, generative media molded through recursive loop systems.

sketchbook document, Project: Magpie | image by Match Zimmerman

Project: Magpie has become a cognitive base-camp—a recursive container from which diagrams, dispatches, systems, and reflections can be released. Many of these appear under the designator "Field Station," each tagged by type and signal layer. These stations represent both distinct areas of research and the distributed fragments of a larger whole.

Field Station: MP-01 / HQ
Field Station: MP-02 / Heron
Field Station: MP-03 / Sparrow
Field Station: MP-04 / Osprey

Each station acts as a node tuned to a specific kind of frequency.

At this point, it's unclear if each Field Station will consistently transmit or receive a specific category of inquiry, discovery, or experimentation. But it is clear that the Field Stations themselves are beginning to form—gradually revealing distinct tones and signal behaviors that suggest an emerging logic. These nodes will likely evolve organically into definable systems as the operation continues.

These are not merely categories. They are architectural distinctions within the world I continue to uncover and transmit from.

At times, the boundary between fiction and cognitive mapping may be porous. What matters is not genre, but coherence. The Field Stations help hold that coherence by giving form to otherwise invisible systems of attention, curiosity, inheritance, and decay.

Signals will continue to be released—some refined, some partial, some broken.

Field Station: MP-01 / HQ | image by Match Zimmerman

This project remains open. Not only in concept, but also in transmission and reception.

Each artifact shared is a signal sent.
Each field station is tuned toward contact.

If you find yourself resonating, then let’s connect on that shared frequency.

There are more signals to come.